Michael Berger, PhD, is an Associate Director of the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Molecular Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a multidisciplinary initiative to promote precision oncology through genomic analysis to guide the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients. He is also an Associate Attending Geneticist in the Department of Pathology with expertise in cancer genomics, computational biology, and high-throughput DNA sequencing technology. His laboratory is developing experimental and computational methods to characterize the genetic makeup of individual cancers and identify genomic biomarkers of drug response and resistance. As Scientific Director of Clinical NGS in the Molecular Diagnostics Service, he oversees the development and bioinformatics associated with clinical sequencing assays, and he helped lead the implementation and validation of a robust molecular profiling platform (MSK-IMPACT^TM) and accompanying analytical framework for use in real-time patient management. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard University.

As an Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Bonnen is applying her acumen in bioinformatics and human genetics to gene discovery studies for an array of phenotypes and diseases including disorders caused by mitochondrial dysfunction and cancer. The Bonnen lab develops and applies methods for analyzing next-generation sequence data and interpretation of human variation. We collaborate closely with clinicians to translate our findings to clinical and diagnostic settings.

Specialties: human genetics, genomics, functional genomics, bioinformatics, population genetics, mitochondrial disease, metabolic disease, cancer, NGS

Wendy Chung, M.D., Ph.D. is a clinical and molecular geneticist and the Kennedy Family Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine.  She received her B.A. in biochemistry and economics from Cornell University, her M.D. from Cornell University Medical College, and her Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University in genetics.  Dr. Chung directs NIH funded research programs in human genetics of obesity, breast cancer, pulmonary hypertension, and birth defects including congenital diaphragmatic hernia and congenital heart disease.  She leads the Precision Medicine Resource in the Irving Institute At Columbia University.  She has authored over 250 peer reviewed papers and 50 reviews and chapters in medical texts.  She was the recipient of the American Academy of Pediatrics Young Investigator Award, the Medical Achievement Award from Bonei Olam, and a career development award from Doris Duke.  Dr. Chung is renowned for her teaching and mentoring and received Columbia University’s highest teaching award, the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.  She was the original plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that overturned the ability to patent genes and the Institute of Medicine Committee on Genetic Testing.  Dr. Chung enjoys the challenges of genetics as a rapidly changing field of medicine and strives to facilitate the integration of genetic medicine into all areas of health care in a medically, scientifically, and ethically sound, accessible, and cost effective manner.

Dr. Ginsburg is the founding director for the Center for Applied Genomics & Precision Medicine at the Duke University Medical Center and for MEDx, a partnership between the Schools of Medicine and Engineering to spark and translate innovation.  His research addresses the challenges for translating genomic information into medical practice and the integration of precision medicine into healthcare.

He is a member of the Advisory Council to the Director of NIH and is co-chair of the National Academies Roundtable on Genomic and Precision Health and is co-chair of the Global Genomic Medicine Collaborative.  He has recently served as a member of the Board of External Experts for the NHLBI, the advisory council for the National Center for Accelerating Translational Science, and the World Economics Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Health Sector.

Dr. Eric Green is the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is the third NHGRI Director, having been appointed by NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins in 2009.

Dr. Green has been at the Institute for more than 25 years, during which he has had multiple key leadership roles. He served as the Institute’s Scientific Director for 7 years, Chief of the NHGRI Genome Technology Branch for 13 years, and Founding Director of the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center for 12 years.

For just over two decades, Dr. Green directed an independent research program that included integral start-to-finish roles in the Human Genome Project and groundbreaking work on mapping, sequencing, and characterizing mammalian genomes.

Dr. Green earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in 1987 from Washington University in St. Louis; coincidentally, the word “genomics” was coined in that same year.

During his career, Dr. Green has authored and co-authored over 375 scientific publications.

Stephen F. Kingsmore is President/CEO of the Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine, San Diego, which is implementing pediatric genomic medicine on an unprecedented scale. Previously he was the Dee Lyons/Missouri Endowed Chair in Genomic Medicine at the Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine at Children’s Mercy Hospital, Kansas City. He has been the President/CEO of the National Center for Genome Resources, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Chief Operating Officer of Molecular Staging Inc., Vice President of Research at CuraGen Corporation, founder of GatorGen, and Assistant Professor at the University of Florida’s School of Medicine. Dr. Kingsmore received MB ChB BAO and DSc degrees from the Queen’s University of Belfast. He trained in clinical immunology in Northern Ireland and did residency in internal medicine and fellowship at Duke University Medical Center. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists. He was a MedScape Physician of the year in 2012, and received the 2013 Scripps Genomic Medicine award and 2013 ILCHUN prize of the Korean Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. TIME magazine ranked his rapid genome diagnosis one of the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2012.

Dr Howard McLeod is Medical Director of the DeBartolo Family Personalized Medicine Institute at the Moffitt Cancer Center.  He is chair of the Department of Individualized Cancer Medicine and a State of Florida Endowed Chair in Cancer Research.  He is also a Senior Member of the Division of Population Sciences and Professor at the University of South Florida.  Dr McLeod is chair of the NHGRI eMERGE network external scientific panel and a recent member of the FDA committee on Clinical Pharmacology and the NIH Human Genome Advisory Council.  Since 2002, Dr McLeod has been vice chair for Pharmacogenomics for the major NCI clinical trials group, overseeing the largest oncology pharmacogenomics portfolio in the world.  Dr McLeod is also a 1000 talent scholar of China and a Professor at Central South University in Changsha, China.  Howard has published over 530 peer reviewed papers on pharmacogenomics, applied therapeutics, or clinical pharmacology and continues to work to advance individualized medicine.

Dr. Len Pennacchio is a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL), Deputy Director of the DOE Joint Genome Institute, and Adjunct Professor at the University of California Berkeley.  He received his PhD in Genetics from Stanford University in 1998 under Rick Myers and then served as a DOE Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Fellow at LBL under Eddy Rubin. He has authored over 150 publications and received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House for his contributions to the Human Genome Project and understanding mammalian gene regulation in vivo. Dr. Pennacchio has an extensive background in mammalian genetics and genomics as well as with DNA sequencing technologies and their application to address outstanding issues in both the biomedical, energy, and environment sectors. He serves in numerous advisory roles such as NHGRI’s Genome Sequencing Program, the Centre for Genomic Research at the University of Liverpool, as a past permanent member of NIH’s GCAT Study Section. He also is an Organizer and Co-Chair of both annual Advances in Genome Biology & Technology (AGBT) meetings as well as a “Systems Biology of Gene Regulation and Genome Editing” meeting hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Asia. Currently his research is heavily focused on understanding the spectrum of DNA mutations that contribute to human disease through in vivo functional studies.

Heidi L. Rehm, PhD, FACMG is a board-certified clinical laboratory geneticist and genomic medicine researcher. She is the Chief Laboratory Director at the Partners Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, the Medical Director of the Broad Institute Clinical Research Sequencing Platform and Associate Professor of Pathology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She is a leader in defining standards for the interpretation of sequence variants and a principal investigator of ClinGen, providing free and publicly accessible resources to support the interpretation of genes and variants. Rehm also co-leads the Broad Center for Mendelian Genomics with Daniel MacArthur focused on discovering novel rare disease genes and co-leads the Matchmaker Exchange to also aid in rare disease gene discovery. She is a strong advocate and pioneer of open science and data sharing, working to extend these approaches through her role on the steering committee of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. Rehm is also a co-investigator of the BabySeq Project exploring the clinical use of genomic sequencing as an adjunct to newborn screening, principal investigator in the eMERGE consortium supporting genomic discovery and genomic medicine implementation, and a principal investigator on a project to develop i2b2 into a Health Innovation Platform for clinical decision support.

Dr. Talkowski directs a genomics research program that explores the consequences of genetic variation on human disease, particularly human developmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as the application of innovations in genomics technology to clinical diagnostics.  Dr. Talkowski has performed seminal studies to introduce high-resolution genomics techniques to delineate the types of genetic variation that were classically defined using cytogenetic methods, which has discovered new classes of complex genomic variation  in the human genome that are remarkably common yet otherwise cryptic to conventional technologies. His laboratory has also discovered and characterized a significant number of novel genes contributing to autism and human neurodevelopmental disorders, and has recently applied whole-genome sequencing technologies and large-scale genomics datasets to prenatal detection and interpretation of structural variation in the genome.